


Break Up in Aisle Three

by TabithaJean



Category: The X-Files
Genre: Angst, Break Up, Mulder wants treats, Post-Movie: The X-Files: I Want To Believe (2008), Scully wants to get the shopping done, and it doesn't end well
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-14
Updated: 2020-08-14
Packaged: 2021-03-05 22:15:32
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,443
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25902664
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TabithaJean/pseuds/TabithaJean
Summary: Mulder accompanies Scully to the supermarket. Things haven't been easy between them, and while there, Scully finally snaps.
Relationships: Fox Mulder/Dana Scully
Comments: 2
Kudos: 23





	Break Up in Aisle Three

Her collar is damp with rain. She shivers as stray drops slide down her back. The fluorescent lights are offensive, and she keeps her eyes on the cart which is full of soothing greens and reds from her vegetable selection. A box of cookies lands in the middle, disrupting the calm.

‘Mulder, we don’t need cookies,’ she sighs, putting them back on the shelf. ‘I made oatmeal and raisin cookies last night.’

‘ _Scully_ ,’ Mulder feigns indignation. Or is it real? She can’t tell. ‘You can’t call those porridge bites cookies. Do they even contain sugar?’

‘Honey,’ Scully mumbles as she leaves the cookie aisle. ‘There’s honey in them.’

‘I rest my case.’

Mulder trails behind her, picking up items, pointing out pop tarts, querying her selection of bananas. She tuts like an impatient mother when he presents her with a waffle iron.

‘We don’t need this.’

‘Yes we do. The last one broke, remember? It short circuited, and then you took it apart.’

She does remember. Confident in her electrician skills, she tried to replace the fuse, only to find that appliances had moved on since her father taught her about fuses back in the early 70s. She had stuffed it at the bottom of the trash and not mentioned it again.

‘Ok, that’s true,’ she concedes. The waffle iron stays, and Mulder fist pumps.

She’s not sure why he’s come with her today. The grocery store has always been her domain. Strategizing the weekly meals is her guilty pleasure. She loves selecting the perfect broccoli that will see them through three nights, or that bunch of basil which will stay fresh until Thursday when she makes pasta. Perfect grocery shopping is an art form, a riddle, an escape.

‘Do we need milk?’

‘Yes, we need milk.’ She checks it off her list as Mulder heaves a gallon into the cart to service their respective coffee addictions. He’s climbing out the other side of some long, morose months. She’d had to paper over his gap yet again, explaining his absence from the Scully Christmas or hospital fundraiser. _He’s busy writing an article for that geographic journal. Deadline, you see. Of course I’ll share it, I’d love to. Yes, very proud._ There was no article; his freelance career had dried up as he became more and more unreliable.

‘What are we having for dinner tomorrow?’ Mulder asks.

‘Uh…. Chicken and rice.’

‘With a sauce?’ he makes a face. ‘Chicken is so dry.’

‘Yes, teriyaki.’

‘Oooh that sound great.’ His grins. Her insides are about to explode through her skin, covering the store with her bloody annoyance. He’s being nice. He’s being himself. Why does she hate it?

‘Glad you think so,’ she smiles back, trying to feign happiness.

The hardest days where not his silent ones, but the talkative ones. The days when he would corner her, waving newspaper clippings which were smudged from over-handling, spending hours dissecting why 2012 didn’t take place as expected. The nights spent going over and over and over the same details. She’d fall into an exhausted sleep to the upside-down lullaby of his obsessing, only to wake at 3am to find him crouched beside her bed, nose to nose, ready to pick up exactly where he’d left off.

They had existed for months (years if she’d allow herself to do the math) in this pattern. He’d refused to see a doctor until one day he’d sliced his hand open making grilled cheese at 11pm – a rare attempt to feed himself – and she’d taken him to hospital. He arrived home the next day with a bandaged hand and a prescription for pills which he took sporadically.

And now he’s chirpy. He’s doing well. She’s not sure what’s changed, and she doesn’t want to dig. Two weeks turned into eight, and her relief is balanced delicately with the fear it could all topple down. Somewhere along the way, his darkness spread into her and she can’t find a way to turn the lights back on.

‘Ah no, not that cereal.’ Mulder replaces her muesli with Cheerios. ‘This is still healthy. Ish. It’s the healthiest cereal in the tasty category, so a good compromise overall.’

‘We can get two kinds of cereal, Mulder,’ she murmured as she put her muesli back in the cart.

‘Two cereals, Scully, living life on the wild side.’ He grins at her again, and she wants to cry. He looks like he did when they were on the run, when she was reason enough for him to get out of bed.

‘Well it is a Friday night after all,’ she tries to joke, but it doesn’t land. It’s like her current is flailing about without an earth wire to ground it.

They arrive at the end of the aisle and consider the eggs. They both reach at the same time, she picking up a large and he the jumbo size. They stare at each other in an unexpected egg-off.

‘Large is fine,’ she says warningly. She could have finished this fifteen minutes ago if he wasn’t here. She hadn’t even properly inspected the bananas to make sure they were the right side of ripe.

‘I agree, Scully,’ he says teasingly. She raises her eyebrow waiting for the punchline. ‘Jumbo is kind of egg-stravagant.’

‘Ha ha.’

‘But think of what we can do. We can egg-speriment. We can make as many pancakes as we want, and still have enough for omelettes after we egg-ercise.’

She gives him the satisfaction of a smirk and tries to wrestle the jumbo pack out of his hands. Annoyance creeps up her throat and she bites her tongue to stop herself saying something mean.

‘Come on! Let’s take them. I’m already egg-cited to see what kind of egg-ceptional meals we can concoct with these bad boys.’

‘We don’t _need_ them though, Mulder, they’ll just go to waste.’

‘Don’t be a rotten egg, Scully!’ He is full of glee. She counts to five while her fists clench and relax, trying to work out what to say.

Words, she realises, there’s always been words. So, so many words, but they’re never hers. He talks and talks, his words spill out and crawl into the corners of every room, they pile up like Tetris blocks, and she can never find the right gap for her own. There is no room.

Back in the early days, her words would test him. They kept him honest, he’d once said. They enjoyed tight repartee. They flirted like intellectuals. _How do you make general relativity so sexy, Scully?_ But it was all so that, ultimately, _his_ words would be perfect when presenting his theory to local law enforcement, to Skinner, to a grieving family.

She stands in front of him with her mouth open, but he doesn’t see her. He doesn’t see that his words have supplanted hers, or even that she’s trying to speak at all. She’s not even sure that she has anything to say. Her breathing quickens, and her heart races to keep up. They’re an ouroboros, she and him: they’ve eaten their tail and all they have before them are long nights and empty words. She puts a hand where her tattoo sits, and wonders if that was the moment which cemented this outcome. He is still talking, still making his case for the jumbo eggs, and she can’t get enough air into her lungs. Her windpipe is full of his words. Her collar is damp. The shopping cart feels like jelly under her hand and she needs to leave.

‘I have to go,’ she gasps. Mulder stops mid-sentence, concern immediately replacing his mirth. He’s definitely on the mend, she thinks as she casts desperately for her purse.

‘Scully, are you ok? What’s wrong?’ He puts a hand to her cheek so tenderly, and she knocks it away. Her skin burns where his fingers had been.

‘I can’t do this, I can’t do this anymore. I have to go,’ she babbles, words now spilling out of her. Her neck is clammy. In a mirror image of him, she strokes his cheeky gently and hates herself for being repulsed by his touch. ‘Mulder, I have to go. I’m just going to go away for a little while. I’ll be at my mom’s, I’ll call you from there. You’ll be ok to get an Uber home, won’t you? I just need to –‘

She turns on her heels and strides away from the cart without a glance. Mulder, still clutching the jumbo eggs, watches her in stunned silence beside their cart with a waffle iron and basil which will sit in their fridge for the next two weeks.


End file.
